Right, but I think he's asking about after character generation. Personally, as a GM, I wouldn't allow a negative trait to be "deactivated" until it was bought down to a legal level (zero for many, but some others can be had at lesser negative values, representing, e.g., progress made in therapy to overcome compulsions).
Well, during Chargen as well. Basically lets say at the end of Chargen I have -300 XP in Glass Jaw. I also have 150 XP in Toughness. Under the Opposed traits rules, you combine them to cancel each other out. In this case, you wind up with -150 XP in Glass Jaw. During the next phase, Optimization, you reduce Glass Jaw back down to -300 XP.
Now what's to stop you from spending your XP to put some points into Glass Jaw? You can spend XP to completely erase the trait if you wanted, so why can't you spend 150 XP to partially negate it, or just 1? The full value hasn't been reached, so under the rules it shouldn't activate.
Just wondering if I was missing something.
As for phenotype traits, I might just ask the writers at some point.
And another one popped up today. I'm pretty sure I know how it works out, I just can't find the explanation for it.
Clans and Rank/Officer ranks. I swear there's something out there that says Clanners don't have to bother with OCS to take officer ranks, and you just sort of ignore that, but damned if I can find it.
So. How does clanner rank work?